Re: Ambiguity

Roger Mills wrote:
> In finishing off Prevli Syntax, I've come to a lengthy, complex and rather
> repetitious section dealing with ambiguity in sentences with same-subject 3d
> pers.pronouns, like "he thinks he is sick", "he said that he thinks he is
> sick" and many others. Or, "he asked whether he knew that he had eaten rotten
> meat?" True, in a discourse, there will probably be context that clarifies
> matters, but in the absence of context, no. One could always stick in
> personal names.
>
> An additional problem that gets a lot of attention is that Prevli has
> inalienable possession, so that in a sentence like "Mary says that she will
> feed the baby", _baby_ MUST carry a possessive suffix, usually -z, so
> "titi-z" 'baby' can mean 'his/her baby' or (in context) 'the baby'. One would
> assume that we mean "Mary will feed (her own) baby", but what if Mary is an
> aunt, a sitter, or just a helpful friend, etc. ? (The pronoun "she" is also
> ambiguous-- Mary? someone else?) How necessary would it be to be absolutely
> precise in cases like this? Or should we just leave it to our old friend
> "context"?
>
> There are indeed ways to disambiguate in Prevli, which of course will be
> discussed; but I'm wondering just how many example sentences are worth
> citing, and whether the discussion can be abridged considerably.
>
> How do various other conlangs deal with ambiguities like this? Has the problem
> arisen? How much attention is it really worth?
>
> All suggestions welcomed.
Minza has a "4th person" which could more accurately be called an
alternate 3rd person pronoun. Tirelat has a reflexive pronoun, although
I haven't defined a reflexive possessive prefix. If I did, I could
distinguish between "Mary will feed her (someone else's) baby" and "Mary
will feed her own baby", so that's probably a good idea.

I could even take that a step further and distinguish between "Mary said
that she (someone else) will feed her baby" and "Mary said that she
(herself) will feed her baby". Then there's still the ambiguity of
whether someone else (X) will feed her own (X's) baby or a third
person's (Y's) baby. Well, the scope of the reflexive pronoun could be
limited to the clause "she (X) will feed her (X's) baby", but then you
can't indicate with a pronoun "she (X) will feed her (Mary's) baby".